


when it's all said and done, we'll shine like the sun

by gealbhan



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Autistic Character, Canon Disabled Character, Character Study, Family Dynamics, Gen, Implied Relationships, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26235148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gealbhan/pseuds/gealbhan
Summary: As far back as Clover can remember, she and Light have relied on each other. It’s just a simple fact of life: Light and Clover look out for one another, and that’s the way things are.
Relationships: Alice & Clover Field, Clover Field & Light Field
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	when it's all said and done, we'll shine like the sun

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this out of spite (as you do) like 4 months ago and am only now editing it... better late than never, i suppose!
> 
> warnings: pretty much everything in canon (kidnapping, violence/injury, etc) as well as implied bullying and ableism, though nothing in explicit detail. this takes place mostly pre- and post-999, so there are lots of spoilers on that end, but not many for vlr/ztd aside from brief character details. expansion on bg relationships: alice & clover can be read as pre-relationship, and aoi/light, akane/carlos/junpei, and lotus/seven are implied at the end.
> 
> title from "embers" by owl city. crossposted on ffo [here](https://fanfiction.online/story/448567). enjoy!

It’s official: Clover _hates_ Nevada.

Putting aside all of the shitty goddamn memories she’s accrued here, trapped in a building—disguised as a ship or not—and fighting for her life and, more importantly, her brother’s, she can’t stand the desert. In the SUV, they’re safe from the sand, but heat wafts in nonetheless; Seven keeps saying the AC, which Clover had flipped on first thing, is bound to kick in at any moment now, but Clover is pretty sure he’s just deluding himself at this point. Clover’s hoodie is almost stuck to her skin with sweat. She’s just lucky she’s not crammed in the backseat with everyone else. That kind of enclosed space— _yuck_.

Hell, she’s surprised Light isn’t making a bigger fuss. He doesn’t like tight spaces already, and that groaning from the coffin—

Clover jerks herself out of her thoughts by twisting the steering wheel so sharply that Lotus (real name Hazuki, she’d said in a quiet voice almost lost to the wind, but Clover needs some time to adjust to that) yelps and clutches the car door for support.

“The hell is wrong with you?” groans Lotus, shooting a glare over her shoulder.

Clover’s only response is a scoff. Junpei’s white knuckles against his knee say that he already knows there’s no hope of them catching up to the Kurashikis anytime soon, so their best bet is to find somewhere to crash and maybe call help and their next of kin. The problem is getting there. Clover has never had the best sense of direction, and between the sleeping drugs and overall trauma, her memories of Building Q and its aftermath are too foggy for her to know any nearby towns. And there’s no GPS, and obviously nobody has a phone on them. They’ll be lucky to find a gas station by sunset.

At least if night falls, it would be cool. Maybe too cold, especially for Lotus, but heat affects Clover differently. Sweating makes her feel disgusting, like she wants to crawl out of her skin, and she hates it. End of story.

And anyway, if Clover didn’t already have a thing about heat, being stuck in an incinerator definitely sealed that coffin.

…Dammit. There she goes thinking about coffins again. Clover kinda wants to bang her head into the steering wheel, but that’s not a good idea while she’s driving, so for once, she stops that impulse in its tracks.

Continuing to floor it, she tugs at her hood. In the side mirrors, she can see dust flowing up into the sky, coming off the SUV’s tires like smoke from a dragon’s mouth, and though the windows are closed, she almost covers her mouth and eyes on instinct. Any sense of relief she might have had from escaping the Nonary Game again or excitement to be involved in a real-life chase sequence, however ill-fated, is numbed by, well, everything else. She doesn’t want to be driving anymore—she technically _shouldn’t_ be in the first place; she’d given Seven shit for not having an international permit, but it’s not like she has anything more than a Japanese moped license either—but she’s not going to up and admit that now.

Clover sighs and rests her head against the window as best she can while driving. She wishes there were a radio, or a conversation, or anything else to occupy herself with other than the seemingly endless horizon sprawling out ahead.

After a moment, her wish is granted, though not in the way she’d wanted. “Uh,” pipes up Junpei from the backseat. “What is _that_?”

Clover squints through the haze—she can’t see anything for a moment, and she’s about to accuse Junpei of losing it when she spots it: A figure standing against the sky, their thumb out.

Okay, now Clover thinks she’s losing it, too. A hitchhiker, all the way out here? No way. But when she glances over to the passenger seat—she doesn’t trust Seven’s judgment, and of course Light is in the half-literal dark—Lotus is frozen with shock too.

Everyone else seems too stunned to say anything. Seven (who, unlike Lotus—Hazuki—whatever, hadn’t offered a real name) and Junpei look so pale they might as well have seen a ghost.

When Clover slows down, it’s with a wince for the wave of heat that hits them. The figure is moving now, and Clover almost can’t believe what she’s looking at—the mysterious hitchhiker is a woman, and a rather scantily-clad one at that, her clothing and general look evoking memories of some of the mythology books Clover had liked as a child.

A stranger. A stranger who is extremely questionable in terms of attire and habits. Clover is sociable enough, outgoing and exuberant to what some might describe as a fault, but after the day she’s had, she’s not sure she can muster up the proper skills.

Light can’t meet her eyes in the rearview mirror, but she glances back at him anyway. His face is slack with confusion—and a little bit of frustration that no one is elaborating on what’s happening, judging from the furrow between his brows.

With a swallow, Clover stops the car.

*

As far back as Clover can remember, she and Light have relied on each other.

It’s odd, perhaps, given their age difference—Light is already six when Clover is born, so they’re never even in the same school—and the fact that they’ve never been _alone_ , with only each other to count on—their parents are on the overbearing side, and neither is really in want of friends. But it’s a simple fact of life: Light and Clover look out for one another, and that’s the way things are.

They’re opposites in most ways. Clover is loud and bubbly where Light is calm and collected. Light is a sponge for information, picking up all sorts of odd trivia on a range of topics. Clover isn’t dumb and, past a certain age, will cuss out anyone who suggests so, but she doesn’t care as much for little details. Appearance-wise, they’re different down to the roots of their hair. People who don’t already know them are always surprised to find out they’re related, and though Clover always shrugs it off (the prospect of them _not_ being siblings is weirder to her), she guesses can see where the confusion comes from.

But there is, too, a certain kinship in their behavior. Certain textures disgust Light but delight Clover; others, they can agree are the greatest in existence or the worst. Clover cares too little about personal space—Light, too much. They both fidget often, finding outlets before proper tools are provided: Clover toys with her long hair and the strings on her hoodies, and Light twirls any pen put in his hand and clicks unplugged computer mouses. Their eccentricities form an unspoken connection long before they’re recognized as comprehensive diagnoses.

What perhaps connects them most, then, is their recognition that they’re both beyond the norm. Even if they don’t act the same, they find comfort in that sense of belonging—and ironic normalcy—from young ages.

This long-standing bond only grows stronger after Light’s accident. Clover is six when it happens, and she doesn’t understand the details at the time, only that she’s removed from school and almost crawls out of her skin as her mother drives her to meet Light and their father at the emergency room, the air so tense it’s almost suffocating, thick with confusion and worry. She’s only told what had happened in the waiting room. Clover bobs her head along to her mother’s explanation, only processing that they’ll both be fine.

“Can we see him? Can we see Light?” is her only question, single-minded in the way children have about them, and her mother acquiesces.

They’re brought down winding halls plastered in posters, but Clover’s attention—usually so spastic—stays firmly ahead. Her mother is asking the doctor things, but Clover ignores all of this unimportant adult business, moving as fast as her short legs will carry her.

“Light, someone is here to see you,” says the nurse.

Clover is already darting inside. When she sees Light in the bed, he looks frail and weak, nothing like the sturdy pillar of a brother she’s used to. She can’t help but gasp at the sight, though her mother shushes her. Gauze covers his eyes and the stump where his arm used to be. His skin is even paler than usual under the buzzing fluorescent lights, and his hair hangs limp against his shoulders. All sorts of cords are hooked to him.

He’s drifting in and out of consciousness, the heart monitor jumping between extremes, but he sits up with a hesitant smile. However scary it is to see him like this, that makes everything all right.

Before Clover has even made it across the room, tears are falling. Her mother hurries to soothe her, assuming that she’s growing anxious at having to see Light like this.

That isn’t _un_ true, but it’s more than that. Clover sobs it into Light’s shoulder: “You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

Their father is released from the hospital that evening, with only minor injuries, but Light stays a while longer. His eyes and skin had been pierced by glass, and he needs to readjust in a controlled setting, or something like that.

Clover insists on visiting every day. She reads to him, tells him about her days at school, talks about cute animals she’s seen and funny jokes she’s heard, lets him know that Hayato in his class dropped by the house to bring his homework by (this brings a bright smile to Light’s face and makes the tips of his ears go strawberry-red).

She’s there on the day they wheel him out. She tries to get up on tiptoes to push him along, but she’s thwarted by her height and the nurse’s intervention. Still, she walks right alongside his wheelchair and narrates their surroundings, exuberance making up for a limited vocabulary.

At home, Light hugs Clover and thanks her with tears in his eyes. He can’t hold on very tight, so Clover squeezes right back.

From then on, they’re even closer. They’re unable to be inseparable, with their schedules, but whenever possible, Clover acts as Light’s eyes. Light is far from helpless, and he hates being thought of as such, but there are some things he simply _can’t_ do now. Clover does her best to help with these things: Describing (appropriate) pictures online and TV shows he used to like, reading textbooks that aren’t in braille because printing is expensive, navigating new spaces, taking self-defense lessons with him, anything else she can do to help.

Whenever she can be, she’s glued to his side. For a while, it’s hard to let go of him for an instant, because he’d been in an accident the one day she wasn’t there, but before long she’s back to cherishing the moments she does get to spend with him.

Light returns the favors whenever he can. Having to rely on his little sister, he admits once, is somewhat embarrassing, but he appreciates Clover’s aid nonetheless. Even when he’s recovered enough to get by on his own, falling back on other senses, he lets Clover drag him about.

Their antics are only a marginal amount worrying to their parents, at least up until Clover’s ninth birthday, but they are, by all definitions of the word, _kids_. And despite the pressing urge to grow up as fast as possible, they’re mostly allowed to be.

Their similarities—brought to light (no pun intended) with Light’s diagnosis as being on the autism spectrum at age sixteen, though Clover won’t be identified for another four years—are made all the more obvious with age. For her ninth birthday—albeit several weeks late—Clover receives nine four-leaf clovers from Light. For her tenth, she gets a small toy shaped like her namesake instead.

When Light hands it to her, she’s not sure what to make of it. Clover bounces it in her palm. It doesn’t weigh much, and there doesn’t seem to be anything inside, not that she could get to it if there was. It’s about the same size as her small hand. Her blunt nails, cut too close to the skin to be comfortable, curl around its leaves. She wants to ask what it is, but all she does is squint and continue bouncing it up and down, transfixed by it for reasons she doesn’t quite understand.

When she says nothing, Light suggests, “Squeeze it.”

Through a frown, Clover obliges. Squeezing the foam clover doesn’t evoke any particular feelings in her, but she finds herself watching with faint fascination as it creases and rises again beneath her fingers. On instinct, she squeezes it again. And again. And again.

Clover is used to restlessness, but toying with this seems to quell any sense of disturbance in her, or at least localize it to the clover in her hand. When her hand starts to hurt from the force of her squeezing, she bounces it between her palms. It feels magical, somehow.

Clover lifts her head. Light might not be able to see nor feel her wide eyes upon him, but he must hear the swishing of her hair, because he says, “It’s a… stress ball, of sorts. You have trouble focusing often, do you not?”

“Erm,” says Clover. This information has been trailed across her report cards like cookie crumbs since first grade. Tightness flares in her chest, and she squeezes the supposed stress ball again.

Light’s arm stretches out, hovering in the space between them, and Clover knows why at once; she readjusts his hand to rest on her shoulder. He pats her arm and smiles. He keeps his eyes closed most of the time—dryness and light sensitivity, Clover is told, as well as to abate the unsettled feeling people get when he doesn’t look _at_ them—but Clover can feel the warmth of his attention upon her.

She squeezes the clover. “Thank you,” she tells him. “Do you, um, have any more?”

“A few for myself—our parents have gotten some.” Light pulls a small silicone rabbit from his jacket pocket, and Clover watches in fascination—and a little distress; she _knows_ that inanimate objects can’t feel things, but seeing something, especially animal-shaped, manipulated like that tugs at something in her chest—as he stretches it out. He puts it away and twists a ring on his hand. “As a whole, objects like these are called stim tools. If you’d like to look up any more—”

Clover is already blurting, “Yes,” thinking frantically about the possibilities. Light laughs.

“Consider this one a birthday gift and a thank-you gift.”

Clover squishes the stim tool between her hands. “A thank-you gift? Thank you for what?”

“For being such a sweet and understanding sister these past years,” says Light, and Clover tears up as she rushes to hug him, an embrace that isn’t returned with more than a genial pat to the shoulder.

*

After the Second Nonary Game, life feels almost laughably mundane. Of course Clover doesn’t _want_ to go back to—that again, reliving horrible memories she thought she’d left nine years in the past and convinced Light was dead for a significant portion of time, but—

Well, it’s weird to go back to how things were like nothing happened. Clover’s life has never been normal by any stretch of the imagination, and now it _really_ isn’t. No one else—save the other kids from the first experiment, whom it feels weird to contact out of the blue, and anyway, they wouldn’t get the exact circumstances of this one—understands what she and Light and the others have been through.

Everyday life doesn’t seem to take the hint. It feels so easy and normal in a way it hasn’t since Clover was a baby. (Though she doesn’t exactly remember being a baby, so _never_ may be more apt.)

“It’s weird! Isn’t it?” she says to Light once, elbowing him in the side. He crosses his arms but nods.

Neither Clover nor Light has ever been big on change. It’s always been daunting, a looming shape in the distance, except when Clover decides upon it herself. Which is selfish and hypocritical, she knows, but there’s a world of difference between achieving things and having them thrust upon her. She’d cried at her primary and junior high school graduations, not out of any real sense of sadness but at the impending changes—new schools, new classmates, new classes. It seems silly now, but then, it’d seemed like her entire life was being overhauled.

This situation, she supposes, isn’t much different. She has to shift from living a normal life, if shadowed by a single day in her life when she was nine, to living one plagued by fear and anxiety. She has to act like she knows nothing about the morphogenetic field and her and Light’s connection through it. She has to ignore any number of elephants in rooms for the sake of keeping things _normal_.

Like that’s ever been something Clover has been or aspired to. But everyone seems insistent on keeping her and Light so.

This manifests in coddling and hand-holding from Mr. and Mrs. Field, who seem to forget that their children are both legal adults now. They’ve always thought of them as fragile for one reason or another, but that overprotectiveness seems to have quadrupled.

Clover, for one, can’t fucking stand it. “It’s like—when you were a kid,” she rants to Light, “everybody treated you like you were ten years older. And now our parents are treating you like you’re twenty years younger.”

She can’t speak much for herself, because even when people had talked about how _mature_ she was it had seemed like they were talking down to her, humoring the baby with her grown-up words and attitude. It’s still irritating, though, to be treated like this as soon as she’s gained some semblance of independence.

It continues to be irritating as weeks transition into months. The final straw, however, is when Clover and Light’s mother goes out and hires a whole damn _bodyguard_.

Within twenty-four hours of being watched like a hawk, Clover packs her things. _God,_ she fumes as she shoves clothes and electronics and stim tools and knickknacks into a suitcase, not caring for a second about keeping things tidy, _it’s not like_ _some asshole_ _is going to kidnap us to participate in a deadly game a_ third _time_.

And even if they did, Clover knows how to fight for herself, as does Light. It’s funny—not really—how they keep forgetting the self-defense classes they’d all but forced Light to take as a kid.

Once she’s done putting her things away—it takes two suitcases and a lot of determination—Clover marches across the hall and knocks at her brother’s door. When he coughs inside, Clover pushes open the door. The blinds are drawn, and Light is sitting back with his headphones around his neck, phone set aside. Listening to an audiobook, probably. Not that Clover has the chance to ask.

“Oh,” he says, all casual, “are you leaving?”

Clover stops. “How’d you know?”

“You weren’t particularly subtle about it.” He stands, grabbing his cane as he does, and hauls a suitcase of his own out from beneath the bed. Light tilts his head with a somewhat self-deprecating smile. “You may have to help me pack, though.”

*

Middle and high school suck. This is a near-universal statement, but for Clover, every year is harder. There are the shifts in schools and curricula, for one thing, but what troubles her the most are her surroundings—and the people in them.

In primary school, making friends is easy: Kids gravitate toward each other and talk, regardless of how uncomfortable they are in groups or even one-on-one. It’s somehow so _easy_ for the majority of five-year-olds. But toward the last few years and onward, kids get mean. Who knows what the cause is—the onset of puberty? The gathering of knowledge that means they’re able to understand what their parents say and parrot it with intent? The simple process of aging and growing?

Whatever it is, in many young students, there develops an intense urge to remove anything _weird_ from their lives.

Clover is weird. She knows this best of all; her classmates know it too, and they don’t understand it, but they do exploit it. Her teachers know it but pretend like they don’t. They earn the brunt of Clover’s frustration—with the occasional exception, like her literature teacher in her first year of high school, they act like she’s just like everybody else, that she can rise above if she just _tries_ , that she shouldn’t act out lest she give the bullies more fodder.

Not once is Clover told, _You can be you. They’re the problem, not you._ Counselors look at her with pity; teachers, with condescension; other kids, with contempt. They don’t know _why_ she acts like she does—all they know is that it isn’t normal, and anything out of the norm is to be punished.

One plus, Clover supposes, of her and Light never being at the same school is that they only target her. She’s sure he’d gone through even more—she’d overheard plenty a harsh phone call between their parents and his secondary school administration—but he’d been in a smaller school, somewhere his eccentricities blended in better and teachers paid better attention.

It doesn’t make it any easier, but it does mean the only one Clover has to look after is herself. No one can use Light as a bargaining chip, and if they even mention his name, all Clover has to do is raise her fists.

That isn’t a metaphor. Clover isn’t renowned for her self-control, and one day in her second year of high school, she cuts class after lunch to run straight home and vault over the fence in the backyard, knuckles bloodied and eyes stinging.

She doesn’t know a lot of things, but one thing she does know is that she’ll never let anyone see her cry. They don’t deserve her tears—they don’t deserve a damn _thing_ from her.

Her parents aren’t home—she wouldn’t have skipped if they were—but Light is, and he finds her before long. Her head against her knees, she isn’t looking up when the back door slides open, and she hears his cane knocking against the ground before she hears his call of, “Clover?”

Clover startles, reflexively wiping her face. “Hi,” she chokes out.

In silence, Light maneuvers around her with his cane and sits beside her. The wind stirs the grass at their feet.

“What happened?” is all Light asks.

His tone is faux-casual, but Clover can hear the implication in it. She toys with the ends of her hair, which is dyed bright pink, the color of the bubblegum she likes to chew, and undone around her shoulders. “Some kid made fun of my hair. I punched him. Now I’m here.”

Light never quite discourages her tendency toward violent retaliation. He’d be a hypocrite if he did—neither of them is certain who would win in a no-holds-barred fight, and their parents have put a firm moratorium on any tests. But still, they both know that punching first and asking questions later isn’t exactly the Field family creed.

After a long stretch of contemplative silence, Light says, sounding older than his twenty-two years, “Teenagers can be cruel. I encourage you not to let it get to you, Clover. Especially when it comes to appearances.”

What Clover says next, she’ll regret, but frustration takes her over in that instant. “Yeah, like that matters to _you_.”

It’s not the harshest thing she could have said, but it’s impactful nonetheless. The air goes still between them. Clover covers her mouth on instinct even though Light can’t see it, the way her lips form a perfect O of surprise, how remorse blooms in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” blurts Clover. “I—”

Light holds up a hand. “No,” he agrees before she can put her foot in her mouth even more, “it doesn’t. Not when it comes to other people, at least.”

Clover frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Well—take this.” Light raises his arm. “I could have opted for a far less realistic prosthetic design. When I was fitted, I was offered several different options, each carefully described to me. And I chose this.” He wiggles his forearm—it’s a perfect replica of his other arm, down to the almost unnaturally pale skin tone. Had Clover not already known it was a prosthetic, she would never be able to guess. Light’s mouth twists wryly. “Appearances don’t matter the slightest to me,” he says, “and yet somewhere, I worry about my own. Talk about human nature.”

“Oh.” Clover’s voice is faint. She’d never thought about that before. All she’d been able to focus on when Light had gotten his prosthetic was that it’d help him.

Now, she thinks about it. How Light had chosen a human-looking arm, with only slightly fewer functions than his flesh arm, and how often he still hides it by crossing his arms over his chest or behind his back. She doesn’t even know if he realizes he does that. It doesn’t seem like the best time to point it out.

“I must sound pretty selfish,” she says, flushing and looking down. “I mean, you—”

“Now, don’t do that.” She hears Light’s frown before she sees it. “My struggles are different from yours, true. But that doesn’t mean yours are any less significant. It was… admittedly somewhat thoughtless of me to imply you should simply ignore what has been happening to you. So—”

“I know it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of me,” bites out Clover before he can continue. “I _know_ that. But I still—” She closes her fist over her heart, fingers bunching in the fabric of her uniform, aware of the twinging pain beneath her hand. Meditation makes her feel itchy and anxious, but she tries to take a few deep breaths now. “I’m trying not to care. But it’s so hard.”

Light half-exhales, half-laughs. “Some have questioned our relationship due to our appearances,” he says. “I say that this means we truly are related.”

Clover huffs and wrinkles her nose. “If I knew I was going to get an inferiority complex in the genetic lotto, I would’ve said _no thank you_ and been born to another family instead.”

They laugh, but neither knows what to say past that. There’s nothing, really, that they _can_ say. Sometimes things like this just have to be.

So they sit there in the grass, so distant from everyone else but at least comfortable here, until their parents come home.

*

Clover is bad with faces. This is evident from a young age, when many an awkward encounter results from her propensity to get lost in crowds and instinctively reach for the hand of the nearest woman with long dark hair, who, more often than not, turns out _not_ to be her mother.

It’s not until her diagnosis as autistic that this is addressed. Even then, it doesn’t earn more than a few mentions in counseling. It doesn’t bother her—it’s more annoying than anything, only distressing when she’s faced with the embarrassment of not remembering her cousins’ names or she asks if there’s a new transfer student when a classmate gets their hair cut over the weekend—and it’s not like she can do anything about it. She sees no point in fretting; it’s just something she has to work around.

“Light can’t even see people’s hair or clothes,” she points out, to her mother’s surprised laughter. “I can’t remember faces, but at least I have more to go off of than voices and stuff.”

Her unrelenting optimism is, she’s told, inspiring. She doesn’t see why. Her brain just doesn’t save information about people’s facial features—it’s not the end of the damn world.

Her prosopagnosia also means, though, that even if Hongou had been in Building Q, she can’t say she would have recognized him nine years later, and she doesn’t know the faces of the men who had first approached her and Light about the Ganzfeld experiment.

In the Second Nonary Game, Clover is flying almost as blind as her brother when it comes to such things. She bounces her way around it, recognizing people by their hair and voices and sometimes signature items of clothing. It’s not so difficult when everyone is trapped and can’t change hairstyles or clothes or anything—and when their bracelets broadcast their identities like neon signs on their wrists.

When she finds out that Ace—Hongou—has the same condition, something in Clover snaps. She doesn’t experience it the same way as he does, but that doesn’t make it any better of an excuse for what he’s done. She feels no pity for the fact that it served as the conduit to trick him into killing a man.

Clover isn’t angry at the Kurashikis for this act of manipulation. Oh, she’s mad at them for plenty else—for making her and Light go through this again, for forcing them into life-or-death situations to save one girl’s life (though this makes Clover a hypocrite, she knows, because she and Light would do the same)—but she’s glad, even, that three of the men behind the First Nonary Game have met their fates in nothing short of karmic retribution. They deserve it, for what they’d done to her, to Light, to Akane, to Aoi, to the other fourteen children. Had she access to that revolver, she can’t say that she wouldn’t shoot Hongou too.

But some part of her does wonder: Could she be tricked like Hongou was? If someone shaved Light’s hair and put him in different clothes than he usually wears (like the robes he was wearing in the coffin), could she somehow kill him?

Clover likes to think that she would just _know_ , somehow, but she isn’t sure. The thought scares her, so she tries not to think about it.

(Sometimes, though, it still creeps into her thoughts at night, permeating her dreams and ruining what little rests she’s able to get in the first place. On these nights, Clover sits in the living room with Light and listens to audiobooks with him, curled up on the pull-out couch and clinging to her brother’s hand like a little kid. She’s able to lull herself to sleep only by reminding herself of everything she knows about Light.

She doesn’t know whether it’ll be any help in the future, but all she can do is try.)

*

When Clover is eight (almost nine!) and Light is fifteen, they visit a hospital for their annual checkups. Reflexes, yearly shots, noninvasive poking and prodding, and height and weight measurements form a steady routine. It’s an average visit—Clover isn’t psyched about it, but she doesn’t kick and scream to avoid it either. (She even gets a Hello Kitty bandage over a cut on her knee. She loves it, but she also has to fold her hands in her lap to keep from peeling it off before her mother says she can.)

Or at least it would have been average, were it not for the offer they receive toward the end.

While they’re waiting for Light to finish having his blood drawn, visiting businessmen approach Clover and her mother. To an eight-year-old, they look frightening, inhumanly tall and stiff. They wear the same suits as Clover’s father, but something about them is cold, unfamiliar, as sterile as the hospital they’re sitting in.

Feeling very small, Clover grabs for her mother’s hand, only to have it torn away when Mrs. Field stands to shake one businessman’s hand. They start talking—boring grown-up stuff with a lot of big words that sound like they’re from the books Light likes to listen to. Clover hides behind her mother as best she can. One of the men leans down toward her anyway, and just as he’s asking if she’d like to help with something, Light emerges with a cotton ball taped to his elbow.

“Oh, is that your brother?” asks the man, and Clover nods, tugging at her skirt with uncharacteristic bashfulness. “Good, we’ll need his help as well. It won’t be anything big—just a little experiment. You’ll only be apart from your brother for a couple minutes, and even then, you won’t _really_ be apart. What do you say, hm?”

“I—I don’t know,” says Clover, picking at the edges of her bandage.

Their mother switches to Chinese—Clover speaks it better than her, but Light barely speaks any. Either way, they’re both listening close when she says, _“Go with these men for a few minutes, won’t you? It won’t take long, and I’ll be waiting right out here for you. It’ll be all right. I promise.”_

Clover bites back a protest when Light takes her hand and squeezes it in reassurance. Head lowered, she manages to nod. Her mother smiles, pleased, and brushes Clover’s hair behind her ear before turning back to the businessmen.

They’re separated into two rooms. Light tugs at his sleeves as he’s guided away. The parameters of the so-called experiment are explained to Clover as she’s made to sit in an uncomfortable chair, the metallic seat digging into her legs, but she barely listens, distracted by the building sense of anxiety filling her small body and unable to keep up with the unfamiliar concepts.

If she closes her eyes tightly enough, she can almost see Light: In the room opposite hers, red light washing over an unnecessary blindfold, white noise playing in the headphones covering his ears. She can almost hear the static and feel it crawling on her skin.

“Observe this target,” she is told, “and mentally transmit the information to your brother.”

Clover doesn’t get it, but she doesn’t say so. She shifts in her seat, trying to get more comfortable; she crosses her ankles and bounces her soles against the tile.

The man notices. “Sit as still as possible, please.”

She can’t do that, but she doesn’t say that, either. She tightens her jaw and tries to keep her eyes from watering.

Clover clenches her fist in her pocket, tight enough that her knuckles hurt. _Light is just in the other room,_ she reminds herself. _We can go when this is over. Mom promised._

And, with a breath, she looks to the screen.

*

Alice is almost everything Clover is not.

Clover realizes this almost as soon as she meets her. After they pick her up, they continue on. The already-stifling amount of awkwardness in the car doubles, in no small part due to the man (well, former CEO, kidnapper, and murderer, so not much of one) tied up and gagged in their trunk. Clover watches Alice in the rearview mirror, squished between Light and the door.

She doesn’t speak much Japanese, so Clover and Light had had to handle translations—Clover is pretty sure some of the others can speak English, but they’d been no help. Despite the briefness and discomfort of the exchange, Clover had been able to tell that there’s a shrewdness about Alice that her appearance might not suggest. She’s young, of an age with Light, but there’s something sharp about her. Light is smart, obviously, and while he lapses into sarcasm often, there isn’t a malicious bone—natural or prosthetic—in his body. Clover can’t make a snap judgment about Alice yet, but—

Alice’s eyes are guarded, careful. She is as still as a statue in the backseat. She doesn’t even seem to notice Light fidgeting beside her, adjusting the sleeves of his ugly robes and drumming his nails against his thighs. She just stares forward, glancing at the horizon and then meeting Clover’s eyes in the mirror for a split second.

Clover looks away then, but she finds herself sneaking glances for the rest of the drive.

When they stop at a gas station, Alice is the first out. She makes a beeline for the building. Everyone heaves a collective sigh of relief at her absence, which Clover thinks is kinda rude, but she’s not one to talk. Either way, once Alice has stepped back outside, Clover leaves Hazuki and Seven—with occasional input from Light—to haggle with the operator while she wanders over to her.

“So,” says Clover, “what’s with the outfit? Junpei thought you looked like some Egyptian priestess.”

Alice doesn’t look up from her phone, busy—Clover assumes—hammering in the password to the gas station’s WiFi, but she does stop typing for a second. “Well, that’s what I am.”

Clover has gone through enough today that she might believe this were she not exhausted. “Uh-huh.” She pauses to stretch out a kink in her neck and shake the numbness from her fingers. The pain in her ass, she thinks, she’s just going to have to wait out. Turns out sitting for an extended period of time sucks. Yet another reason Nevada fucking blows. “Anyway, what are you doing now? Contacting the cops to have us all arrested?”

“I would never contact the police,” says Alice immediately, and part of Clover is like, _Okay, yeah, she’s cool_. Alice regards her with folded arms, though, expression cool but not unkind, and continues, “But you all _did_ come from a building in the middle of the desert owned by a private corporation to which you have no obvious ties. And you clearly don’t have an American driver’s license.”

“Hey! That’s—”

“Am I wrong?” Clover can’t answer that, only scowling in indignation, and Alice shrugs. “Sorry for being suspicious of an SUV full of delirious Japanese people rolling through the Nevada desert.”

“Okay, _that_ you’re kinda wrong about,” says Clover. “Light and I are only half-Japanese. Our dad is Chinese American. …But, yeah, we are technically Japanese citizens ‘cause nationality laws are totally fucking busted.”

“I thought so, from your accent.”

“Uh, you have an accent too,” Clover points out. She can’t tell what it _is_ , but something about Alice’s lilting tone is definitely foreign, though Clover can’t figure out if it’s fake or not.

This gets a startled laugh out of Alice. They don’t talk beyond that—Clover decides she has nothing more to say and heads back to the car just in time to prevent Hazuki from slapping someone (though it’d be deserved at this point)—but there’s something lighter in the air when Alice climbs back in. She offers to take over driving from there.

Clover jumps at the chance and takes Alice’s place in back next to Light. Once she’s strapped in, she catches Junpei’s still-wide eyes and gestures as surreptitiously as she can toward the trunk. Junpei nods. Clover doesn’t know what that means, but it’s not like she can up and ask about Hongou, so she stews in her confusion for the time being.

Newly gassed-up, they set off in search of a place to stay. By some small miracle, they manage to find a small town before it gets too dark for Clover to see her hand in front of her face. The motel isn’t great, but it’s somewhere, and with Alice among them, they can pay for a couple of rooms.

Alice disregards this almost immediately, though, and gathers them all into one room. It isn’t too surprising when she sits them all down and asks about their experience in Building Q.

It _is_ surprising when, a few weeks later, Alice offers Clover and Light jobs.

Clover’s decision is almost made in that instant. Never before has someone so clearly indicated that they’ve seen something of value in her, even if it’s only her and Light’s weird sci-fi abilities. For all of her life, she’s been as average as they come. She’s not Light, the unassuming genius, nor is she Akane or Aoi, masterminds that she, at the moment, still has a lot of mixed feelings toward—she’s just Clover, and never before has that been good enough for anyone except Light, who kind of _has_ to feel that way.

She talks it over with Light, of course, to make sure he’ll join alongside her and maintain that familiarity and connection. Alice’s superiors probably think they’re useless apart, anyway.

In the end, and to Clover’s relief, it’s unanimous. Light says, “As long as you join, I will,” to which Clover sniffs and says, “That’s what _I_ was going to say.” Alice welcomes them with arms about as open as any of them can stomach.

With few qualifications between them, Clover and Light are adrift in their jobs as the agents of a secret government agency for a while. They’re not allowed to do field (ha) work yet; the thing they don’t tell you on TV is that government work consists, for the most part, of a _lot_ of paperwork in such dense legalese that even if English were her first language, Clover doesn’t think she would be able to parse ninety percent of it. For the most part, all they do is shadow Alice.

It’s hard to deny that Alice is cold, ambitious, proud, and intelligent. In her first weeks with SOIS, Clover hears whispers about what a self-centered, frigid bitch she is. How she clawed her way to the top at age twenty, fresh out of college with a degree she started at sixteen. How she’s ruthless and cunning and would betray anyone in the organization to achieve her goals.

Clover has a feeling most of this is bullshit, but it’s hard not to take it at face value at first, even with the side of Alice Clover has already seen. Bit by bit, as they get to know each other better, Alice’s facade cracks away. Clover takes any opportunity she can to spend more time with her, to learn more about her.

(Light shakes his head at her for it, but it’s not like she hasn’t read the extremely gay excerpts from his book and scrapped song lyrics.)

It’s easier to ignore the comments when Clover learns about some of Alice’s more instinctive traits. Like this: Alice bites her nails.

She doesn’t do it often, especially not around people she doesn’t trust (which is almost everyone), but she does do it. Clover drops a file folder the first time she sees it. It takes a few weeks for her to point it out, and when she does, it’s only to keep Alice from ruining the shiny nail polish she’s just applied.

Alice, expression blank with shock, drops her hand from her mouth immediately. They sit there staring at each other for a moment. When the silence—save for the buzzing of the fluorescent lights in the room—grows too uncomfortable, Alice sighs and folds her arms.

“Have you heard of onychophagia?”

“Um…” It sounds like something Light would go on for hours about without Clover really getting the gist, but she doesn’t recognize the word. “No.”

“I didn’t think so.” Alice doesn’t sound mean about it, just matter-of-fact, but Clover tugs at the ends of her hair anyway. “It’s the scientific term for nail-biting,” Alice adds quickly, and the attempt at non-condescending reassurance brings back Clover’s tentative smile. “For me, it’s something of a compulsion. It’s classified as a body-focused repetitive behavior, similar to skin biting or picking, or—” her eyes flicker toward Clover and then cut, deliberate, away “—hair pulling.”

Clover glances at the strand of pink hair that’s come off in her hand. She hadn’t even noticed she was pulling that hard. “Oh.”

“Right.” With a hint of a smile, Alice shifts her weight to the side. “It’s… difficult for me to open up enough to do it around other people much. I presume you’ll be willing to keep my secret.”

“Duh,” says Clover without a second’s hesitation. Alice laughs, sharp but not cruel—like most of her laughs—and Clover toys with her hoodie drawstring. “Uh, do you want to borrow one of my or Light’s stim tools, maybe? I don’t know if it’d work for you, but it might be healthier than chomping down on your nails like that, especially when they’re polished.”

For a beat, Alice only blinks in surprise. Then she tilts her head and asks, “Well, why not?”

And so the next day, Clover presents Alice with a(n unused, she assures) necklace with a chewable pendant, discreet enough to fit in with one of her everyday pantsuits. It takes some time for Alice to get comfortable with using it, but before long, Clover can glance up almost any time they’re in a room together to find her absently gnawing on it.

Any notion of Alice being _only_ cruel and selfish is dismissed forever, replaced with a firm notion of understanding. Clover doesn’t waste her time yelling at the jackasses who fling hypocritically harsh words at Alice’s back, brave enough to say them aloud but too cowardly to say them to her face—she knows who Alice is, and that’s enough for her.

(If she comes down on these people thrice as hard in organization-mandated sparring sessions, though, that’s her business.)

*

Clover is newly nine years old, and she wants to see her brother.

She is in an unfamiliar place, every new sensation burning. The bright lighting, the heat seeping in through the walls, the loud voices over the intercom ( _hurry up, dammit, or your siblings are going to die—figure it out—use the morphogenetic field_ ) and around her ( _we need to go—my sister is on that ship—come with me—we need to go through that door_ ), the cold feeling of the RED and DEAD under her palms. She feels listless yet on edge, apathetic but anxious to her very core, tiptoeing along an electrocuted tightrope.

She doesn’t understand why this is happening. To her, to all of the other kids around her. They’re all scared, and there’s one boy who’s even younger than Clover—he’s seven, he says with a shaking voice, and his older brother is twelve, and he doesn’t want to die, and he doesn’t want his brother to die.

That happens when they’ve first emerged from their cabins, staring at the rules in their pockets and the bracelets on their wrists. It seems to catalyze the tension and sense of impending doom clinging around them.

A girl around the same age as the kid’s sibling is the one to comfort them. She’s tall and her hair is in braids. “My name is Ennea,” she tells them in a high but reassuring voice. “My twin sister Nona is on that ship. We have to figure this out for her—for all of our siblings. We’re going to get out of here, and they’re going to get off of that ship, too, but for that to happen, we all have to work together and follow the rules. Okay? Everything will be okay. I promise.”

She’s younger than Light, but even the few older kids among them seem to look up to her. Her gaze is steady, and her shoulders are broad. Everyone is quick to see her as the first to speak up, and the only one not overwhelmed by the danger they’re all in—for this, they acknowledge her as the most leaderly of them all.

But Clover can see Ennea’s hands shaking, too. The way she swallows when she thinks no one is looking at her. How she stares forward but never quite meets any of their eyes. How she toys with her jewelry when she seems particularly shaky. The recited feeling of her words, like they’re something she’d heard in a movie.

 _She’s like me and_ _Light_ _,_ a part of Clover thinks, though not so concisely.

If Ennea’s speech hadn’t already calmed her—at least partially, because everything is still too sharp and unfamiliar and scary—then that realization does. Clover trusts Ennea, and she brings herself to trust the other children too.

So Clover moves, and with the help of the other eight, Clover claws her way through Building Q.

It takes hours. More tears are shed, and more panic is had. But they pull through it somehow, even if they don’t know if any of this is working, if they’ll see their siblings again even if they somehow manage to escape.

Clover emerges to see the sunrise. The light hurts, but she’s grateful for it, and she holds back her tears for all of a few hours, when her brother is returned to her, bearing stories of a brave dead girl that hurt his head.

Then, she sobs for hours, unrestrained, half-joy and half-fear.

*

“For the last time, Junpei, we aren’t watching _Back to the Future_ again.”

There are fourteen people crammed into Clover and Light’s living room, all surrounding the television, and only one of them protests Clover’s executive decision: Junpei himself, sitting on the floor in front of the couch. “It’s a good movie,” he insists.

Akane, perched on the couch beside her brother, leans down to pat Junpei’s shoulder in the weakest move of sympathy Clover has ever seen. “It’s fine, but not three times in a row.”

Junpei rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. Carlos pats his other shoulder from his position beside him on the floor. Behind them—and beside Light (which has earned him no fewer than nine _I’m watching you_ gestures from Clover tonight)—on the couch, Aoi snorts.

Clover pauses for a moment to peruse the rest of her and Light’s (mostly hers; he’s never cared much for film, and the only reason he puts up with it nowadays is because Clover, using her motormouth abilities for good, tries to describe what’s happening on screen both more concisely and in more detail than official audio descriptions) movie collection. “Any other suggestions?”

“ _Homeward Bound,”_ says Diana, sharing the loveseat with Phi and Sigma.

“Not unless you want Sigma making shitty cat jokes for two hours,” says Phi, prompting an eyeroll—but no real protest—from Sigma.

“That, and we don’t have it.” Clover hits a certain section of the movies and bypasses _Kiki’s Delivery Service_ for the same reason. She raises an eyebrow at Hazuki, who’s doing an impressive balancing act on one armchair, stretched from armrest to armrest across Seven’s lap. “Favorite Ghibli movie?”

“ _Princess Mononoke,”_ says Ennea from the floor at Hazuki and Seven’s feet; at the same time, Nona says, _“My Neighbor Totoro.”_

They glare at each other. Alice, on the other armchair with her legs folded, puts an end to their brief conflict with a drawl of, _“Howl’s Moving Castle.”_

Clover ignores them all and instead announces that she’s putting _Spirited Away_ in, which draws pleased laughter from Light and resigned mumbles from everyone else, because no one can say _no_ to it.

“We can watch _Howl_ after,” she murmurs to Alice on her way over to the couch. “Or tomorrow, if we’re too tired.”

Alice grins at her, teeth bright in the dark. Clover manages not to stumble, but as she’s about to squeeze herself onto the armrest next to her brother, she pauses to look around.

Despite the low lighting, the room is bright and warm. Here, everyone relaxes into each other. If anything is put before her, Akane lines it up. Junpei always wears at least two layers of clothing, shrugging on jacket after vest after shirt for the comforting warmth and weight. Hazuki is the opposite, dressing in loose clothing and carrying around fans to keep herself from getting overstimulated. Seven wears three watches and still has trouble with the passage of time. Aoi’s arms are covered in bracelets, and he fidgets with them almost nonstop. Alice thinks in formulas and chews on the pendants of her necklaces when her nails are covered in fresh paint. Phi can recite Latin phrases under her breath for hours at a time. While Sigma is talking, he solves Rubik’s cubes, scrambles them, and solves them again. Diana loves bulky sweaters and rests her hands in clawed positions at her waist when they’re not otherwise occupied. Every twenty-odd minutes, Carlos gets up and walks in circles. Nona and Ennea communicate with looks more often than not, wearing headphones and waving their hands when they get excited.

Here, they’re all allowed to be themselves, openly and unequivocally. They’re all pretty weird, Clover has to admit, herself included—but they all understand each other, and they’re not alone, not for a second.

With a grin and a click of the remote, Clover plops down on the edge of the couch arm. She stretches her legs out far enough that her heels dig into Aoi’s knees. He gives her a disgruntled look but does nothing to stop her. Satisfied, Clover lets her allocated remote arm hang at her side and raises her free hand to bump her knuckles against Light’s shoulder. He jumps a little but soon relaxes, tilting his head to smile vaguely toward her.

As the opening sequence of the movie plays, Clover settles in, content and comfortable.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! if you have time to spare, comments and kudos are super appreciated <3
> 
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